Elves, environmentalism, and “eco-terror”: Leaderless resistance and media coverage of the Earth Liberation Front

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2012 8: 75 originally published online 9 April 2012Crime Media CulturePaul Joosse

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Elves, environmentalism, and “eco-terror”: Leaderless resistance and media coverage of the Earth Liberation Front

Paul JoosseUniversity of Alberta, Canada

AbstractOver the past decade and a half, North America has seen a rash of environmentally motivated arsons. One group in particular, the clandestine Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has targeted ski resorts, genetic research labs, SUV dealerships, and forestry buildings, leading James Jarboe of the FBI to declare the ELF the “number one” domestic terrorist threat facing the USA. This article analyses the social construction of the “ecoterrorist threat” in the pages of the New York Times. Various stakeholders—including ELF spokespersons, moderate environmentalists, corporate interests, and state agencies—have sought to influence the way that media covers the ELF. Ultimately, much to the chagrin of ELF spokespersons, discourses of ecoterrorism have normalized in mainstream media, which regularly frames the spokespersons and activists as “dangerous clowns.” In turn, this coverage has prevented the expression of the ELF’s ideology, foreclosing the potential for the mainstream media to represent as legitimate the concerns of the ELF. I argue that blame for this failure rests in part with certain implications of the ELF’s organizational strategy of “leaderless resistance,” which—unlike civil disobedience movements of the past—is predicated on having its actors remain unsympathetically faceless and nameless.

KeywordsEarth Liberation Front, eco-terrorism, radical environmentalism, terrorism

“Ecoterrorism suspected in house fires in Seattle suburb”—thus reads a recent New York Times (NYT) headline about the Earth Liberation Front (Yardley, 2008). Over the past decade, there have perhaps been no more evocative tropes than “environmentalism” and “terrorism.” Both shimmer with con-notation, both resonate with the collective hopes and fears of “the West,” and both, for good or ill, have spurred the mobilization of incredible social forces. It would be difficult to overestimate the

Corresponding author:Paul Joosse, Department of Sociology, 5–21 Tory Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H4, Canada.Email: [email protected]

433366 CMC0010.1177/1741659011433366JoosseCrime Media Culture2012

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76 CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 8(1)

importance of “war on terror” and “global climate change” to the modern political consciousness, for in many instances these ideas form the basis for political concern itself. We should not be sur-prised, then, that an age preoccupied with this dual focus would produce discursive hybridities. Indeed, we might say that, given the circumstances, “ecoterrorism” was bound to happen.

Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, radical environmental groups like Earth First! have been employing civil disobedience and sabotage in their efforts to halt the ongoing degradation of the natural environment. These radical environmentalists often spiked trees, sabotaged logging equipment, and generally tried to wreak non-violent havoc on businesses and industries linked with environmentally destructive practices. More recently, clandestine radical environmental cells—referring to themselves collectively as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) —have added a new tactic to their repertoire—arson; and along with this tactic came an increasingly inflammatory rhetoric that has caught the attention of authorities and fired the imagination of contemporary North Americans in an a way that previous groups like Earth First! never experienced (Joosse, 2007; Taylor, 1998).

In this article, I analyze the social construction of what, since the late 1990s, the media has viewed widely as the “ecoterrorist” threat. I find that popular media has proven to be a battle-ground in which various stakeholders compete to shape discourses surrounding the ELF and its actions. Major magazines like Rolling Stone (Grigoriadis, 2006) and New York Times Magazine have featured extensive stories about the ELF, and coverage in all major newspapers has been prolific.

Hackett (1991) maintained that counter-hegemonic groups can find and exploit “cracks in the monolith” of mainstream media. Similarly, DeLuca (1999a, 1999b) has argued that counter-hegemonic groups can use spectacular, image-laden, radical tactics to circumvent negative media frames. The present study argues that, while some gains are indeed possible for radical groups in terms of media representation, for leaderless groups like the ELF other countervailing forces are at work—forces that render them largely ineffective from a public relations perspective.

Specifically, I posit that the ELF’s current lack of success stems in part from its organizational strategy of “leaderless resistance” (Garfinkel, 2003; Joosse, 2007; Leader and Probst, 2003: 37–58; Pressman, 2003: 422–5) in which spokespersons, rather than the activists themselves, publi-cize the various direct actions committed by the group. This strategy is inexpedient because—unlike the traditional Gandhian strategy of civil disobedience (in which actors claim responsibility for their legal violations with the aim of revealing the injustice of laws themselves)—these “elves of the night” avoid such scrutiny, thereby foreclosing the possibility of eliciting a moral solidarity with the wider public, even though many members of that public hold deep concerns about envi-ronmental degradation (Vanderheiden, 2005: 439). Furthermore, while their predecessors in Earth First! regularly faced physical danger by blocking logging roads with their bodies or during tree-sits, ELFers, through their non-presence, lack this “body rhetoric” entirely (DeLuca, 1999b). Public-relations duties thus fall to spokespersons who, because they are only sympathizers, lack the gravitas needed to elicit respect from mainstream media. Consistent with the predictions of labeling theory (Becker, 1973; Lemert, 1962; Spector and Kitsuse, 1977), this “credibility gap” acts to simultaneously attenuate the influence of radical environmentalists and amplify the influ-ence of their enemies; namely, state and corporate actors. When counterposed with the undeni-able juvenility of many ELF proponents, this translates into “dirty” (Tavener, 2000) semiotic excesses surrounding ELF representation, and the promulgation of a negative media frame that I term “the dangerous clown.”



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Specifically, then, in this arena I examine how three main stakeholders—ELF adherents, corpo-rate interests, and state agencies—seek to influence the way that popular press covers the ELF. At the center of this battle are arguments about the appropriateness of referring to the ELF as an “ecoterrorist” (or simply, as a “terrorist”) organization. Ultimately, I find that, despite the efforts of ELF adherents, and because of the efforts of corporate and state interests, mainstream media have normalized discourses of ecoterrorism. This normalization has prevented the expression of the ELF’s ideology, and foreclosed the potential for the concerns of the ELF to be represented as legitimate in media outlets like the NYT.

MethodsFor my purposes here, I choose to focus primarily on definitional wars that occur in 62 NYT arti-cles, for two main reasons. First and most obviously, the Times is one of the most respected and influential newspapers in the world—commonly regarded as “the paper of record.” Many other newspapers across North America take their cues for story angles, tone, and priority of issues from the NYT’s determination—just or otherwise—of “all the news that’s fit to print.” Thus, NYT cover-age, while not generalizable to the universe of news dailies, is nevertheless a strong indicator of trends in media coverage.

Second, during their tenure as spokespeople for the ELF, Craig Rosebraugh and Leslie Pickering directly and persistently targeted the New York media market. In his book, Burning Rage of a Dying Planet, Rosebraugh explains why he coveted New York exposure:

Coverage in New York meant international exposure and a dramatic rise in national publicity. Leslie and I were well aware of this fact and constantly attempted to push the ELF story into the New York scene. Through direct calling, faxing, and emailing press releases, we were deter-mined to saturate the market out East until we noticed results. (Rosebraugh, 2004: 151)

Presumably then, if we are trying to evaluate the success of the media strategies of the ELF, we would do well to look at a media site that was a particular target of their efforts.

The sample of articles was compiled using ProQuest Newsstand, which—because it began fil-ing NYT and affiliated publications in 1980—was more than adequate for surveying the career of the Earth Liberation Front. The NYT is the flagship publication for a wider brand which includes both NYT Magazine and NYT Book Review and it was therefore appropriate to collect the sample by searching for in-text occurrences in these three publications of “Earth Liberation Front,” “ELF,” and “E.L.F.” Several articles were then excluded from the sample since they only contained tan-gential or passing references to the group, or because they were simple news summary pieces and not articles in their own right. The sample, comprising 62 articles in total, was downloaded on December 16, 2009, and spanned just over 10 years, from the ELF’s first appearance in the NYT on October 22, 1998 to its most recent, on November 28, 2009.

The articles were then imported into a word processor and coded by hand. To analyze the data, I used aspects of content analysis and grounded theory. Content analysis involves generating themes through “identifying, coding, and categorizing the primary patterns in the data” (Patton, 1990: 381). Grounded theory, with its roots in symbolic interactionism, is similar to qualitative content analysis in that it aims to generate theory from raw data through coding schemes. An




additional characteristic of grounded theory is “constant comparison,” where “all pieces of data are compared with other data” (Morse, 1995: 27–8). Included in this process was analysis of images that accompanied stories in a few cases. While images are admittedly polysemic in nature, the interpretations contained herein are methodologically rigorous, in that they occur within this larger context of constant comparison with the textual data.

As I analyzed the news articles, I noted possible themes and emerging concepts in the margins. I then expanded and refined these themes and concepts as I compared them with each other. Eventually, the key themes that emerged became the theoretical categories that now give struc-ture to the article itself. While the bulk of the analysis was qualitative, at times I also employed quantitative elements to check against and bolster the main findings of the piece.

A brief history of ELF actionsThe ELF first began operating in the United Kingdom in 1992, started by a group of Earth First!ers who were frustrated by their organization’s desire to abandon illegal tactics (Taylor, 1998: 20; see also Molland, 2006: 48–51). ELF actions soon spread to continental Europe, New Zealand, and Australia in 1993, and by 1996 they were occurring in the United States (Molland, 2006: 53–5). The year 1998 saw a particularly destructive and spectacular action when a ski resort at Vail, Colorado burned to the ground, resulting in $12 million in damages. During the period of the late 1990s and early 2000s the ELF was at its most prolific, and James Jarboe (the FBI’s top domestic terrorism officer) linked the ELF to 600 criminal acts committed between 1996 and 2002, totaling $43 million in damages (Leader and Probst, 2003: 38). Attacks at many US locations have contin-ued since, including the August, 2003 burning down of a 206-unit apartment complex under construction in San Diego (Ackerman, 2003a: 143), the burning of five houses on the “Street of Dreams” near Maltby, WA (Yardley, 2008), and the toppling of two radio towers in Snohomish County, WA (Associated Press, 2009; Whitney, 2009). The grand total of financial impact of ELF attacks has long been well in excess of $100 million (Rosebraugh, 2004).

Despite these few spectacular examples, most ELF actions are on a considerably smaller scale, consisting of minor acts of vandalism. Also important to remember is that no ELF actions have injured or killed anyone. This fact is quite remarkable—one that can be read both as a testament to the careful planning of ELF actors and perhaps also to simple good fortune—since arson is an unpredictable and therefore undeniably dangerous tactic.

The ELF’s organizational structureThroughout this study, I refer to the ELF in the singular, but by this phrase I do not intend to convey a sense that the ELF is characterized by significant levels of organizational unity. Rather than a “group” or an “organization,” the ELF is a collectivity in the most limited and virtual sense (Joosse, 2007). The ELF’s organizational strategy is anarchical, and various writers have characterized it as “leaderless resistance” (Garfinkel, 2003; Joosse, 2007; Leader and Probst, 2003: 37–58; Pressman, 2003: 422–5). Essentially, leaderless resistance involves the spontaneous formation of cells by those who are inspired by other cells’ actions. Thus, ELF does not have leaders, and no lines of control or command exist between those who decide to go active. In the words of the operators of earthliberationfront.com:



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Because the ELF structure is non-hierarchical, there is no centralized organization or leadership. There is also no “membership” in the Earth Liberation Front. In the past...individuals have com-mitted arson and other illegal acts under the ELF name. Individuals who choose to do actions under the banner of E.L.F. do so only driven by their personal conscience. These have been individual choices, and are not endorsed, encouraged, or approved of by the management and participants of this web site.

In this way, the ELF encourages adherents to act in response to the specific local injustices that they perceive going on in the areas in which they live, and to act in accordance with their own consciences. Three guidelines prescribe limits on what is an ELF action. These guidelines include:

a) To inflict economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environmentb) To reveal and educate the public on the atrocities committed against the earth and all species that populate itc) To take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human or nonhuman. (Bourne and McNabb, 2003: 10; Rosebraugh, 2004: 18)

Thus, as well as being a strategy aimed at preventing detection and prosecution by government agencies, leaderless resistance also remains thoroughly in keeping with the anti-authoritarian ethos to which many in the contemporary radical environmental movement adhere.

The anti-corporate, anarchist ELF ideologyBecause of their clandestine nature, it is often difficult to ascertain the ideological motivations behind specific ELF actors (Joosse, 2007). When an attack occurs, one cannot simply ask the per-petrators about their political leanings. Often this information does become available, however, in a variety of ways—through the ELF website, through publications, through communiqués, and through the writings of convicted ELF prisoners. Often in these cases, ELF actors display an anar-chist philosophy along with anti-capitalist/anti-corporate sentiments.

Noteworthy in this regard is a “Frequently asked questions” pamphlet published by the North American ELF Press Office that read:

...it is not enough to work solely on single, individual environmental issues...the capitalist state and its symbols of propaganda must also be targeted [p. 4]...The ELF ideology maintains that it is the very social and political ideology in operation throughout westernized countries that is creating various injustices on this planet and ultimately the destruction of life. That ideology is capitalism and the mindset that allows it to exist [p. 7]. (Ackerman, 2003b: 189)

According to ethnographer Bron Taylor, ELF spokespersons Craig Rosebraugh and Leslie James Pickering “were drawn to the ELF because, as anarchists, if not anarcho-primitivists, they perceived fellow travelers behind the anti-industrial rhetoric of some ELF statements” (Taylor, 2003: 177).

Perhaps most instructive with regard to the ideological orientations of some ELF actors are the communiqués that usually follow actions. After an arson at Boise Cascade’s (a multinational




logging company) 8,000 square-foot northwest headquarters, the communiqué below appeared, which professed a knowledge and outrage at the international operations of corporations:

Boise Cascade has been very naughty. After ravaging the forests of the Pacific Northwest, Boise Cascade now looks toward the virgin forests of Chile. Early Christmas morning, elves left coal in Boise Cascade’s stocking. Four buckets of diesel and gas with kitchen timer delay [sic] destroyed their regional headquarters in Monmouth, Oregon.

Let this be a lesson to all greedy multinational corporations who don’t respect their ecosystems.

The elves are watching.

Earth Liberation Front

Another communiqué was similarly anti-corporate, and released in 1997:

ELF works to speed up the collapse of industry, to scare the rich, and to undermine the founda-tions of the state. We embrace social and deep ecology as a practical resistance movement...We take inspiration from Luddites, Levellers, Diggers, the Autonome squatter movement, the ALF, the Zapatistas, and the little people—those mischievous elves of lore...Let’s dance as we make ruins of the corporate money system. (Rosebraugh, 2004: 20).

Thus, in contrast to moderate environmental organizations that seek to reform the system from within, some ELF adherents display the ideological (though not the organizational) features of what Fitzgerald and Rodgers call a “radical social movement organization” in that they “critique the existing political/economic system and demand radical restructuring rather than reform” (2001: 576). At the level of the spokesperson then, and sometimes at the level of the actor, there is an ideology that views the expansionist compulsion of neoliberal capitalism as inherently threat-ening to the vitality of the earth. In this framework, ELFers are “earth liberators” when they seek to “eliminate the profit motive from the destruction of the natural environment...in the form of economic sabotage” (Leslie Pickering quoted in NAELFPO).

How the ELF tries to “make the news”Michael Lipsky argued that one of the main functions of protest actions is “to articulate goals and choose strategies so as to maximize their public exposure through communications media” (1968: 1144). In this regard, social movement actors often are faced with a dilemma between, on the one hand, increasing the likelihood of attracting media coverage through the use of extreme tactics, and, on the other hand, decreasing the legitimacy that the media tend to accord movements that employ such tactics. Despite discourses surrounding “direct action” that frequently emphasize the practical, non-rhetorical aspects of principled attacks, these attacks nevertheless often involve a sophisticated publicity calculus that is in accordance with a long-standing tradition of “propa-ganda by the deed” that dates back to the earliest proponents of anarchism. Theorists like Brousse



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and Kropotkin advocated deeds for propagandistic purposes (Graham, 2005: 150–70), but prob-ably most influential was Bakunin, who regarded deeds as “the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda” (1870: 195). In keeping with the ELF’s second guideline, we must therefore keep in mind that, when the ELF attacks a target, its aim is always at least partly pedagogical—not merely a simple manifestation of the desire to “make corpora-tions pay.” The actions are carefully calculated media events, meant to act as a wedge that creates a space within mainstream media for the expression of their anti-corporate ideology.

Several factors increase the likelihood that ELF actions will garner coverage by the mainstream press. One is that ELF actors differ from their predecessors in that, while groups like Earth First! and the Sea Shepherd Society tended to focus on the protection of areas that are largely unpopu-lated by humans (such as forests or ocean territory), the ELF consistently has sought to cause damage to high-profile targets in populated areas. Ski resorts, genetic research labs, sprawling urban sectors, and SUV dealerships are common targets.

As already mentioned, communiqués claiming responsibility will often surface on the heels of an ELF action. The ELF spokespersons have played a crucial role in the dissemination of the content of these communiqués. Perpetrators began delivering communiqués claiming responsibility to environmental activists Leslie Pickering and Craig Rosebraugh in 1997, first though their mail-boxes and telephones, and then through email (Rosebraugh, 2004: 21). Rosebraugh and Pickering then would conduct media interviews that would publicize the communiqués. At first, the pair carried out these activities part-time from their homes, but eventually they decided to set up the North American ELF Press Office (NAELFPO). They also produced a video, an FAQ booklet, and even published a quarterly magazine (Rosebraugh, 2004: 199–200). Rosebraugh had a keen sense of his importance as a spokesperson in the process of disseminating the message of the ELF. He wrote:

media coverage...helps to spread ELF’s messages and warnings to other potential targets. It allows people to understand that their property may also be attacked if they are destroying the environment purely for monetary gain. For a group as small as the ELF, this feature is quite important in making the organization’s pressure far outweigh its size. (Rosebraugh, 2004: 155)

In the next section, I assess the extent to which Rosebraugh was successful in his news-making aims. In other words, I seek to examine the degree to which the anti-corporate ideology that Rosebraugh sought to espouse actually found its way into NYT coverage.

The ELF in the NYT: Treehuggers, terrorists, and “dangerous clowns”Rosebraugh is the most commonly cited individual in the NYT articles I surveyed. During his tenure as spokesperson, he appeared about as many times as did representatives from the FBI, and far more than did business interests. Thus, from a strictly quantitative point of view, Rosebraugh should be happy with his access to this popular news-making institution. When looking at how the articles framed Rosebraugh and the other few representatives of the ELF, however, a different story emerges. In his analysis of NYT coverage of Students for a Democratic Society (the SDS), Todd Gitlin noticed that often articles trivialized the movement, and that the media had a




penchant for “making light of movement language, dress, age, style, and goals” (1980: 27). In their analysis of anarchist protests, McLeod and Detenber similarly note that news stories “tend to focus on the protesters’ appearances rather than the issues, emphasize their violent actions rather than their social criticism, pit them against the police rather than their chosen targets, and down-play their effectiveness” (1999: 3).

In the articles I examined, I indeed noticed a trend towards this type of trivialization, but para-doxically at the same time I saw a tendency to treat them seriously as terrorists. In other words, the stories both made light of ELF adherents and portrayed them as a menacing threat. A good example is a story from the NYT Magazine about convicted ELF adherent Craig Marshall, provoca-tively titled, “From tree-hugger to terrorist” (Barcott, 2002: 56). Normally, one would not expect to see these labels juxtaposed so starkly, and such a juxtaposition clearly has a striking rhetorical effect. To be a “tree-hugger” evokes the connotation that one is histrionic, irrational, “pagan,” and, for lack of better words, “namby-pamby”; to be a terrorist connotes the characteristics of ruthlessness, conviction, and callousness. Another article described Rosebraugh as a “lanky vegan” with a “pale, bespectacled face” while at the same time touting him as the spokesperson for an “‘ecoterrorism’ group” (Barry and Baker, 2001). In yet another example, an unflattering portrait of Rosebraugh stares blankly out from a full-page spread in a NYT Magazine article titled “The face of eco-terrorism” (Sullivan, 1998: 47). Here, the reporter described Rosebraugh as someone who “ran a bakery that he started that made vegan muffins and cookies,” and who, during the course of the interview, spoke to “a couple of young men in ski caps and a woman wearing patched-up jeans and a T-shirt with a quote from Gandhi on it in marker” (Sullivan, 1998: 49). All of these descriptions, which work to trivialize ELF adherents, paradoxically appeared in articles about the presumably serious topic of terrorism.

Sometimes the juxtaposition of these contradictory characterizations is too much for even the reporters themselves. Al Baker recounted a court appearance of alleged ELF vandals and described the scene:

As one of the teenagers, Matthew Rammelkamp, prepared to plead guilty to arson conspiracy, the judge...looked down from the bench and asked sternly if he had used any drugs.

“I’ve taken medicine for acne,” [replied the teen] Mr. Rammelkamp, 16, said.“Acutane.” (Baker, 2001a)

This experience left reporter Al Baker unable to take seriously the “terrorist” characterizations of these ELF adherents, and he wondered if the spate of vandalism was “the work of a smart, devoted band of eco-terrorists, or young vandals merely blowing off adolescent steam?” (Baker, 2001a:).

In these instances, we have ideal examples of what Jo Tavener referred to as “dirt” (2000: 72). Transgressions of binary categorizations, in this case between “treehuggers” and “terrorists,” lead not to a liberation from the categories themselves, but rather to a spectacle in which the transgressors come off as cartoonishly silly, childish, morally perverse, and criminal. A “semiotic excess” is involved in imagining a terrorist organization staffed by incompetent, young “punks” or “hippies,” and this excess makes for compelling news stories. It is thus in the nexus between the “terrorist” and “treehugger” frame that the “dangerous clown” is born.



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The result of this narrative strategy, however, is that the environmental motives behind ELF actions are seldom taken seriously, and are almost always obscured from view. Articles need not discuss motives because these discourses express the sentiment that “they are terrorists” (in which case no motive can be morally exculpatory) or that “they’re just kids,” incapable of mature politi-cal thought. Left with these options, the most expedient rhetorical strategy is not to refute the “dangerous clown” frame in toto, but rather to tease apart the frame’s constituent elements, and argue in favor of the less deviant of the two. Such was the case when the lawyer for convicted ELF arsonist George Mashkow sought sympathy for his client in the pages of the NYT by arguing, “I am not representing an environmental activist. I am representing a 17-year-old misguided kid who basically made the monumental mistake in his life” (Baker, 2001b).

In the articles I examined, this lack of seriousness also stems from certain implications of the group’s leaderless structure. When discussing the blockages to media representation for counter-hegemonic groups, Hackett noted that “journalism is most comfortably practiced in interaction with hierarchical organizations” (1991: 274). Occupational standards dictate that journalists are under constant pressure to vet and ensure the credibility of their sources, and as such they tend to gravitate towards official sources within recognized authority structures that confer legitimacy on members/leaders. Conversely, these same standards mandate that reporters harbor greater levels of suspicion and incertitude when engaging less conventional sources for which this type of pre-established legitimacy is lacking. Indeed, while other protest groups (not to mention law enforcement agencies) are accustomed to supplying leaders or at least members for comment, ELF spokespersons pointedly eschew these recognizable and credible stations for tactical and ideological reasons. “Trying to get a handle on [the ELF] is like trying to grab a fistful of water,” reporters lamented in one article. Adding to their frustration was the fact that Rosebraugh “is the only one attached to the movement” to whom they had access (Barry and Baker, 2001).

A near constant theme for the journalists who interacted with ELF spokespeople, then, was their “right to speak”—a factor that reporters at times openly challenged. Sullivan, when writing a more in-depth piece for the NYT Magazine remarked:

Rosebraugh is always careful to explain that he is not a member of the E.L.F. and that he knows next to nothing about the group, though he is sympathetic to its cause. In deep spin mode, he told another reporter, “To me, Vail expanding into lynx habitat is eco-terrorism.” (1998: 47, emphasis added)

Here, the lack of credibility of the source links hand-in-hand with the reporter’s incredulity towards the radical environmental perspective proffered, seeing it as a cynical product of “deep spin.” NYT writer Al Baker also expressed grave concerns about inadequacy and inaccuracy of the informa-tion that ELF spokespeople were spreading about the group:

It has not gone unnoticed by federal and local authorities tracking the group that news bulle-tins about Long Island actions released by an Earth Liberation Front spokesman in Portland, Ore., are chock-full of errors.

Those bulletins have miscalculated the scope of damage (fire gutted one unit in one building in a Middle Island condominium complex, not 16 nearly completed luxury homes, as claimed);




overestimated the economic value of their destruction ($200,000 worth of fire and smoke damage in Middle Island, rather than the $3.5 million claimed); and gotten simple facts wrong (the communiqué claimed the Mount Sinai attack was on Dec. 29, when in fact it was a day later). (Baker, 2001c)

In one sense, the ELF spokespersons are functionally operating as independent journalists by issu-ing press releases, releasing their own publications, and carefully protecting their sources. There can be no doubt, however, that this self-positioning elicits derision from the mainline journalists with whom they interact, since from the perspective of the guild, perhaps no crime—arson not-withstanding—could be greater than the errors of fact described above.

This preoccupation with the credibility of the ELF spokesperson is further evidenced by the frequency with which Rosebraugh and other spokespersons were made to field questions about their peculiar station. In the thirteen articles where Rosebraugh was consulted as a spokesperson, ten of these appearances contained explanations of leaderless resistance, while only seven also included limited ideological content from Rosebraugh. With spokesperson Elaine D. Close, all three appearances contained descriptions of leaderless resistance, while none of them contained radical environmental ideological content. Leslie James Pickering’s two appearances both con-tained elements of leaderless resistance explanations, with one of these appearances also contain-ing ideological content. Thus, most of the “face time” in the press that ELF spokespersons enjoyed was devoted to explaining the leaderless cell structure of the ELF and their peculiar role as spokes-persons, rather than outlining the movement’s ideological underpinnings.

When seeking to understand fully, however, the implications of this leaderless comportment to the press, it is not enough merely to look at difficulties inherent in leaderless resistance itself; it is also important to look at what previous rhetorical advantages may have been sacrificed with the establishment of the current arrangement. Here, DeLuca’s (1999a, 1999b) previous work with Earth First! is most germane. In an examination of Earth First! actions, where activists imperiled themselves by tree-sitting in logging areas, by chaining themselves to industrial equipment, or by burying themselves in logging roads, DeLuca notes that “performing [these] unorthodox political tactics highlight[s] bodies as resources for argumentation and advocacy” in that bodies “become not merely flags to attract attention for the argument but the sight and substance of the argu-ment itself” (1999b: 9–10). In these instances, eco-centrism, a cardinal tenet of the radical envi-ronmental worldview, is inextricable from messaging of the Earth First!er’s body because:

in putting their bodies on the line in solidarity with trees and ecosystems, the Earth First! activ-ists enact an embodied and embedded defense of nature that belies anthropocentrism’s abstraction of “man” from the natural world and contests science’s contextless universalization of nature. (DeLuca, 1999b: 15)

Thus, for the fundamentally confrontational (Short, 1991) actions of ELF’s predecessors, “the meaning and force of their arguments was dependent on the deployment of their bodies” (DeLuca, 1999b: 20), a factor that is entirely forsaken by the shadowy “elves of the night.” Because they are performatively silent, the elves allow for unchecked projection and inference by third parties about the meaning of their actions (Brummett, 1980: 293–4; Jaworski, 1993: 141; Joosse, 2006: 361–3; Joosse, 2007: 359–63).



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When the bodies of ELF actors do surface, invariably this occurs amid an aura of defeat, actors finding themselves firmly in the grasp—be it corporeal or ideological—of the oppressive system they had so vehemently opposed. Defeat may happen on the stand, under the compulsion to renounce commitments to direct action, as was the case with convicted arsonist Chelsea Gerlach (Associated Press, 2006). Or it may take the form of treachery, as in the case of Jake (now dubbed “the Snake”) Ferguson, who as part of a plea agreement agreed to inform on his friends, wearing a wire while eliciting conversations about past actions (Grigoriadis, 2006). A missive from William C. Rodgers, one of those friends, is most powerful, however:

Certain human cultures have been waging war against the Earth for millennia. I chose to fight on the side of bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff rose and all things wild. I am just the most recent casualty in that war. But tonight I have made a jail break; I am returning home, to the Earth, to the place of my origins. (Marris, 2006)

This liberatory rhetoric of natural embodiment—reminiscent of so many ELF communiqués—gains a tragic air when one realizes that Rodgers’ “escape” was self-asphyxiation with plastic bags, those non-decaying symbols of consumerism, in a cell altogether different from the one he led in defense of nature. The depressive effect of these examples thus stands in stark contrast with the exuberantly strident-yet-vulnerable bodies DeLuca describes in his examination of Earth First!ers (1999a, 1999b).

In cases where no ELF actors or spokespeople were available for comment, the fallback sources for reporters seeking the “environmental perspective” were moderate environmentalists who, it turns out, were themselves instrumental in the process of mystifying the ideological motivations for ELF actions. When called upon to comment, most sought to disavow themselves of any ideo-logical agreement with the ELF, presumably fearing that any such association could result in a transference of guilt for the actions to more moderate environmentalisms. For example, after the arson at Vail, Colorado, Jeff Berman, a representative of Ancient Forest Rescue “appeared depressed by the fires, describing them as a setback for public opinion” (Brooke, 1998). Daniel Becker, director of the global warming and energy program at Sierra Club’s Washington head-quarters, argued “that it was not worth discussing what may have driven the ELF actions because there could be no justification for criminal activity. And whatever their motivation, he said, it had nothing to do with the environment” (Baker, 2001c). In another article, Arianna Huffington, who has conducted a very vocal campaign against SUVs, commented, “what these people are doing isn’t activism—it’s vandalism, and I strongly oppose it” (Madigan, 2003). Finally, Dr. Steve Strauss, who was involved in research into genetically modifying poplar trees, said after an attack on his laboratory, “I don’t call them ecoterrorists anymore. They don’t deserve the ‘eco.’ They’re terror-ists against science” (quoted in Verhovek and Yoon, 2001).

It seems that a semiotic association between environmentalism and terrorism through the application of the sign, “eco,” would be objectionable to these stakeholders in the same way that the term “Islamic terrorism” might be offensive to moderate Muslims who regard violence as something that is inimical to the teachings of the Qur’an. Thus, when interviewed by the NYT, they engage in a process of definitional negotiation that seeks to expunge all references to envi-ronmental motives from the discourses of terrorism that were shaping discussions of the ELF.




Opposing stakeholders: The corporation and the stateELF adherents and moderate environmentalists are not the only stakeholders involved in the strug-gle to define the ELF in popular media. Indeed, in choosing to threaten corporate interests, the ELF also gained some formidable opponents. The next section will briefly examine how corporate and state interests have contributed to defining the ELF as a terrorist organization in the popular media.

Perhaps there has been no more trenchant enemy of environmentalism generally than the “wise use” movement. Hal K. Rothman has described “wise use” as “a well-financed right-wing effort that uses corporate funding to fashion a phony grassroots initiative in an attempt to derail the environmental movement” (2000:177). Indeed, the Wise Use “movement” is actually a coali-tion of over 200 industry groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, the United Four Wheel Drive Associations, Exxon USA, and the National Forest Products Association, which initially joined forces at a conference in Reno Nevada in 1988 (Beder, 2002: 47). At this confer-ence, representatives from these corporations and organizations drafted the Wise Use Agenda, a manifesto that promoted a set of environmental policy goals. Those goals included: the immedi-ate development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; construction projects in national parks that would hire “private firms with experience in people moving such as Walt Disney…[to] enhance the national park experience for all visitors” (Alan Gottlieb, quoted in Manning, 1989: A8); and the transfer of public lands to ranchers for use in grazing (Manning, 1989: A8). They also advocate the conversion of “all decaying and oxygen-using forest growth on the National Forests into young stands of oxygen-producing carbon-dioxide absorbing trees to help ameliorate the rate of global warming” (quoted in Beder, 2002: 48) —which Beder perceives as code for a simple capitalist desire to replace “old growth forests with plantations” (2002: 48).

Part of the strategy of Wise Use is to delegitimize environmental groups—most especially those radical groups that have posed a financial threat to corporate operations. Member Cliff Gardner, who is president of the Nevada Farm Bureau, claimed that Wise Use’s main target is “the hard-core groups that are using the environmental movement to their advantage...I’m talking about those people who would destroy the free-enterprise system of the United States and set up a tyrannical socialist or collectivist government” (Manning, 1989: A8). Given this aim, it is not sur-prising that the Wise Use coalition has subjected radical environmental organizations and groups to continual scrutiny and criticism.

Spearheading Wise Use is the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), co-founded and led by Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb. The CDFE is a non-profit think-tank that conducts research, writes press releases, and seeks to influence public opinion to think negatively of the environmental movement generally. Said Arnold, “You must fight it…You must turn the public against the environmentalists” (Manning, 1989: A8). In one article he boasted, “we created a sector of public opinion that didn’t use to exist,” and that, along with Gottlieb, he wanted “to destroy environmentalists by taking their money and their members” (Egan, 1991).

On many occasions over the years, the CDFE has worked to label the ELF a terrorist organiza-tion in media. Bob Burton, who is a leading researcher and activist for the Wilderness Society, commented:

The eco-terrorism stuff is where I think they are at their most sophisticated, with dirty tricks and media management. If you work back from the incidences and the way in which sequences are



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constructed, the only plausible explanation is that someone has got a very good understanding of public relations. (Rowell, 1996: 350)

Coinage for the “ecoterrorism” label itself may go to CDFE leader Ron Arnold. In a response to an article on the E-zine The Indypendent, Arnold claimed to have been the first to use it in 1982 (Arnold, 2007; Indypendent Staff, 2007). It is clear that by the early 1990s, Arnold had already been applying the “ecoterrorist” label to the ELF’s parent organization, Earth First!, and in 1997 he published Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature. Since that time, the terrorist label has proven to be a mainstay in media representations of the ELF, and Arnold and the CDFE have been behind many of these portrayals. For example, in 2003, the CDFE provided a chronology (100 items long) of ELF actions for Stephen Leader and Peter Probst’s 2003 academic article, entitled “The Earth Liberation Front and environmental terrorism.” In the article, Leader and Probst warn about the possibility that ELF activists might threaten nuclear facilities, and that—despite the ELF’s guideline which prohibits violence against living beings—“the possibility that...individuals could turn to violent tactics...cannot be ignored” (2003: 47). In a story for CNSNews.com, Arnold com-mented on the Green Anarchy Tour of 2002, a fundraising effort in support of prisoners who had been convicted of ELF-related crimes. In the article, he warned that groups like the ELF are “as much a threat as foreign terrorism. These people are going to damage property and kill people” (Morano, 2002). In a 4-minute, 20-second Fox News broadcast about suspected ELF arsons of several luxury homes under construction in the Washington DC area, Arnold and his interviewer use the words ecoterrorism/ecoterror eleven times, and the word terrorism twice. At the bottom of the screen in big letters throughout the story alternate the captions, “ECO TERROR?” and “GREEN MEANIES” (news segment retrieved from http://www.cdfe.org/). Finally, a section of the CDFE’s website is devoted to “Ecoterrorism top stories” with titles such as “Ecoterrorism sus-pected in firebomb left at Auburn, California courthouse,” “Ecoterror suspect Michael Scarpitti, aka ‘Tre Arrow’ captured,” “Terror hits home,” “Burgers make McDonalds target for ecoterror-ists,” and “Jail violent eco-terrorists.” Thus, creating and promulgating the terrorist characteriza-tion of the ELF seems to be one of the CDFE’s primary aims.

Ethnographer Bron Taylor criticized Ron Arnold and the CDFE’s characterization of the ELF, especially their assertion that the ELF is a probable candidate for turning to violence against humans. Taylor, who has conducted extensive ethnographic research in the radical environmental milieu, acknowledged that there is much violent rhetoric in the radical environmental movement, but he cautioned against “assuming that rhetoric that seems sympathetic or enthusiastic about violence will lead to it” (1998: 18). This caution is especially noteworthy because of the biocentric belief—common among radical environmentalists—that all life is sacred (1998: 14–15). He went on to criti-cize Arnold for his book, Ecoterror, because “the most dangerous incidents Arnold reports...were perpetuated by animal rights activists, who Arnold does not distinguish from radical environmen-talists” (Taylor, 1998: 18). Despite these criticisms in the academic sphere, Arnold has been prolific and successful in his efforts to define the ELF in accordance with his ideological orientation.

State interestsAs I will show below, state agencies such as the FBI have also contributed heavily to the prevalence of the “ecoterrorist” label in popular media outlets such as the NYT. Along with the post-9/11




tendency of Western states to promulgate terrorism frames generally (Mythen and Walklate, 2006), two additional motivational factors may explain these efforts. First, the Bush Administration’s popular legitimacy was tied intimately to perceptions of its success (or lack thereof) in the “war on terror.” Indeed, George W. Bush even staked his legacy on this performance, defining himself to the American public as a “war president” (NBC, 2004). In this context, the complete breakdown of coordination between intelligence agencies before September 11, 2001 was a major failing (Wright, 2006), as was the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden and to eradicate Al-Qaeda. In this climate, the value to state agencies represented by the capture of a terrorist is at a premium, and given the lack of success against traditional targets such as Al Qaeda, it would seem likely that incentive exists at the institutional level to capture anyone who might be able to perform a sur-rogate function. Thus, organizational motivation probably is high for declarations like that of John Lewis, an FBI deputy assistant director and top official in charge of domestic terrorism, who labeled ecoterrorism, along with animal liberation terrorism, as “the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat,” in 2005 (Schuster, 2005). Against the backdrop of this trumped-up definition, the capture of ELF actors becomes a boon to a national security apparatus striving to gain public confidence (not to mention additional federal funding).

A second reason for the state’s active promulgation of the ecoterrorist label has to do with the increased intertwining of corporate and government interests on a more general level. Jurgen Habermas described the current moment as one of advanced or “state capitalism,” in which there is a “recoupling [of] the economic system to the political...The State apparatus no longer, as in liberal capitalism, merely secures the general conditions of production...but is now actively engaged in it” (1975: 36). Thus, in the contemporary moment, discourses of terrorism and capi-talism tend to develop symbiotically. The foundations for such connections already were present, evidenced when public and private officials justify projects like the drilling of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in terms of “resource security,” and in how, in the wake of September 11, 2001, President Bush urged Americans to spend and consume in order to “help the country get back on track” (Altheide, 2004: 289; Wolfe, 2007). Also, while on the surface, recent acts of US foreign policy may seem purely political, justified in terms of “fighting terror” and “bringing democracy to the people of Iraq,” clearly a key motivation was the procurement of new markets for develop-ment by US corporations. Now, however, in a new and very explicit way, the ELF has unwittingly played a crucial role in furthering the capitalist interest in drawing connections between the “war on terror” and anti-environmentalism in North America. There can be no doubt that the emer-gence or social construction of the “ecoterrorist threat” has served a frame-bridging (Snow et al., 1986: 467) process between discourses of anti-terrorism and anti-environmentalism.

Evidencing this affinity between corporate and state interests, Ron Arnold has gained consider-able access to the corridors of power. Government officials called upon him, for example, to speak to the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in 1998. The title of the session was “Eco-terrorism,” and in his testimony he defined the term as any “crime committed to save nature”—a definition that could conceivably include even acts of civil disobedience such as road-blocks or sit-ins (CSHJD, 1998). Backing up Arnold’s statements was Republican Scott McInnis (CO). In an interview he was asked:

Q: Should these people be lumped into the same category as what we have come to know after September 11 as terrorists? [to which McInnes replied]



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McInnis: Sure...Absolutely, they are the number one domestic terror threat we have...those people who flew that airplane in that building, they weren’t in it for money, they were in it for a message—disobedience, civil disobedience. (retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=vchQimuFpyU)

Thus, within some sectors of the government, officials regard ELF actors not only as terrorists, but also as terrorists of the worst order, on par with the September 11 hijackers. FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis summed up official positions on the ELF efficiently when, in a congressional committee on Environment and Public Works, he said ELF members were terrorists “in the truest sense” (Lewis, 2005: 11).

In the NYT articles I examined, the FBI’s power to define the ELF as a terrorist organization also has been considerable. Twenty-four of the articles contain instances where the FBI directly char-acterizes the ELF as a terrorist group, along with many other instances where law enforcement or government officials did the same. One article reported that the ELF was “considered by the FBI to be one of America’s most prolific domestic terrorist groups” (Bacon, 2002), in another, James Lewis considered the ELF “the nation’s top domestic terror threat” and worried about the ELF’s “escalation in violent rhetoric and tactics” (Egan, 2005). The story, however, behind an NYT arti-cle from January 21, 2006 is most striking. On the preceding day, January 20, after the indictment of members of an ELF cell, FBI director Robert Mueller held a press conference and declared, “Terrorism is terrorism—no matter what the motive” (Bernton, 2006). The accompanying Department of Justice press release was titled, “Eleven defendants indicted on domestic terrorism charges.” All of this language is misleading, however, because, in the actual indictment itself, the charges (65 in all) are not brought in under domestic terrorism statutes. Rather, the counts were for crimes like arson, conspiracy to commit arson, and attempted arson, among others (USA v. Joseph Dibee et al., 2006). A possible reason for the discrepancy between the language of the press release and the court document would be that, in the court of law, it is much more difficult to make allegations of terrorism than in the court of public opinion. Indeed, during a 2002 hear-ing in Portland, US District Court, Judge James Redden barred the prosecutor from using the word “terrorist” to describe defendant Jacob Sherman, fearing that it would create undue bias within the jury (Bernton, 2006). The press release and press conference resulted in a major story in the NYT that contained FBI director Robert Mueller’s description of the ELF as one of the bureau’s “highest domestic terrorism priorities,” and comments by Republican Senator James M. Inhofe (OK), who has compared the ELF to Al-Qaeda (Janofsky and Marshall, 2006).

ConclusionAll three stakeholders involved in the definitional struggle that I have outlined above are inde-pendent producers of media. The ELF spokespersons have generated press releases and books, as has the corporate lobby, while government agencies such as the FBI frequently produce press releases and hold news conferences. When it comes to their ability to translate this independent media production into ideological representation in mainstream media outlets, however, the latter two stakeholders have been vastly more successful than those who act on behalf of the ELF. This article, therefore, has underscored Simon Cottle’s assertion that, “society’s major institutions—government, the courts, the police and so on—are...[specially] positioned to pronounce on social




affairs and command both the physical resources and the authoritativeness to define and pontifi-cate on newsworthy events” (Cottle, 2000: 433). Indeed, because of corporate and state inter-ests, the discourse of terrorism in connection with the ELF has become status quo, much to the chagrin of ELF spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh. In his book, Rosebraugh expressed frustration at the fact that, in his many dealings with the media, the characterization of ELF adherents as terror-ists went unquestioned:

from the beginning of my time as a spokesperson...I dedicated myself to attempting to tear apart the myth that these environmental preservationists were actually terrorists. This, I quickly learned was not an easy task, since nearly all of the reporters I faced daily took it for granted that I was an ecoterrorist spokesperson. (Rosebraugh, 2004: 237)

After several years’ experience as a spokesperson for the ELF, Leslie Pickering summed up the dif-ficulty of dealing with mainline news institutions like the NYT: “they’re not going to give us twenty minutes of free space. What they do is give us ten seconds of free space after saying ‘You’re a violent eco-terrorist. Defend yourself’” (Guerilla News Network, 2002: 224).

The marginalization of counter-hegemonic groups by mainline media and law enforcement is nothing new (see, for example, Baylor, 1996; Churchill and Vander Wall, 1988; Gitlin, 1980; McLeod and Detember, 1999), but what the spokespeople may have failed to see, and what this article highlights, is that their peculiar subject-position within a leaderless resistance-style organization may have exacerbated these trends towards marginalization. This happens because journalists tend to accord less credibility to the station of the spokesperson in unorthodox contexts of leaderless resist-ance. Also, because the actors themselves are not present, the group relinquishes the powerful “body rhetoric” enjoyed by their predecessors in the radical environmental milieu (DeLuca, 1999b), while leaving their actions open to interpretation and inference by moderate environmentalists, agents of capital, and the state. Thus, in this particular intersection of crime, media, and culture, it would seem that the activities of the ELF and its spokespersons have involved a serious miscalculation about the mechanics of media reception, about the modern American mindset, about the willing-ness of media institutions to report counter-hegemonic ideologies, and about the considerable ability of corporate and state interests to circulate their versions of reality into mainstream media.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Mark Hamm, Serra Tinic, Mark Stoddart, Robert Brink, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would like especially to thank Dr. Stephen A. Kent for his invaluable guidance throughout my writing and for granting me access to the Kent Collection on Alternative Religions, housed at the University of Alberta. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual meetings of the Canadian Sociological Association (2008) and at Respectable Activism or Dangerous Fringe? An Interdisciplinary Conference on Radical Environmental Activism, held at the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia in 2010.

FundingThis research was supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, and by the University of Alberta PhD Dissertation Fellowship.



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Documents

Elves, environmentalism, and “eco-terror”: Leaderless resistance and media coverage of the Earth Liberation Front